Friday Morning Muse

For all who came by looking for these musings yesterday, I am sorry for the lack of focus. I find myself in a position of having other things on my mind at the moment. Right now I am still processing. I am sure I will figure this out shortly, until then I'll try to at least put something out here so you will know I haven't dropped completely of the edge of the earth.

I did notice yesterday that Kate over at Cider Press Hill is thinking of taking on a new challenge. I do not envy her if she does. Living in Texas we seem to have big commutes, not so much because we try but more because they just happen. The 50 gallons of gas per person per year part of the challenge...Not gonna happen here unless I give up the job and go to hanging around and growing all of my own food. I am going to mull this challenge over a while and try to formulate a plan(?) of attack...

Back to my regularly schedule weather muse...The temperature this morning is a rather mild 69 degrees and the humidity is in the soupy 95% range. Texas mornings are great for showers...oops, there goes my daily water allotment. Speaking of water I see this weeks US News has their cover story on the subject. I have to say the headline is grim but probably true..."Why You Should Worry About Water...How this diminishing resource will determine the future of where and how we live." I haven't read the article yet, and they are speaking to the choir here, but I'll be checking it out this weekend.

It's getting late so I better go check the morning's emails...I'll let you know if anything is interesting...

I always find Eugene Robinson's columns interesting but the following paragraph from today's just sings...

When I look at what the next president will have to deal with, I don't see much that can be solved with just a winning smile, a firm handshake and a ton of resolve. I see conundrums, dilemmas, quandaries, impasses, gnarly thickets of fateful possibility with no obvious way out. Iraq is the obvious place he or she will have to start; I want a president smart enough to figure out how to minimize the damage. - Eugene Robinson

"Gnarly thickets of fateful possibility with no obvious way out." Now isn't that one of the most descriptive sentences of world conditions you have ever read? If you have a moment, go read the rest...But, after 8 years of dumbed down expectations I don't hold out much hope for Eugene's ideal President.

Happy Birthday Norma Jean...

Well, it's time to head to work...Catch ya later...

It's another Wednesday Morning in Paradise...

Or, Once again around the circle of the week.

Todays weather promises to be brutal. Yesterday evening at sundown the thermometer was still registering 80. This morning before sunup it's already at 70. That wouldn't be so bad but I see the humidity is at 97%...It's gonna be a scorcher out today.

My commute yesterday turned very long...And there was no traffic. Over the last week the kittens we have living with us till they get up to bye bye size have taken to sleeping on top of my bag (computer, planner, etc). Yesterday before I left, I checked the bag glanced inside and zipped it up as I moved it out the door. Drove to work, grabbed my stuff and went in. As I went to sign in at the front desk I heard a meow...Sure enough, one of the pesky kittens had burrowed down deep in my bag and gone to sleep. So it was back out to the car, back to the house with one little white kitten riding the whole way home on my shoulder...Then back to work, an hour late...You really gotta love life's little games...

Oh well, I got a passel of emails...

Looking at the daily forecast I really do have a bit of a worry. This year has been very strange for the Blue Ridge. I understand mid 80's down here in SE Texas on the Gulf of Mexico in May but it should not be getting that warm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and Virginia this early in the year. I remember our first family vacation to Valle Crucis, it was August and we left 100 degrees plus down here for the mid 80's in the valley. All of the workers at the Mast were miserable, according to them it just didn't ever get that hot in Valle Crucis. We smiled at that and enjoyed the cool (to us). That was just about 5 years ago and here the temperatures are already that high in May (and they have been that warm a lot this year).

I would say this is going to be the straw that breaks a lot of ecological camels backs. After years of watching different species decline, warmer than normal weather is going to start pushing a number of species back north...even on the higher elevations.

I see that Dana Milbank has the same problem that the rest of the Media seems to have with Al Gore. They just can't take it that he isn't running. So what do they do? Well it looks like Mr. Milbank puts him in his place for being smart. Again and again and again he puts him in his place. Then Mr. Milbank puts the hog farmers of Iowa in their place...

Imagine the Iowa hog farmer cracking open "Assault on Reason," and meeting Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, John Kenneth Galbraith, Walter Lippmann, Johannes Gutenberg, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson and Marshall McLuhan -- all before finishing the introduction.

I guess Mr. Milbank doesn't think Iowa farmers have read any history. Talk about Media snobbishness.

He spoke of Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill, only briefly mixing up his patriots: "James Madison wrote -- no, Thomas Paine, I'm sorry." He gave a brief history of the printing press's spread through Northern Europe. He used social science phrases such as "the collective process" and the "marketplace of ideas" and the "exchange of goods and services" and "guided by the role of reason." And he threw in a New Age feel when he discussed the Internet: "It is simply that we have to conjure the full importance that it has in our lives in ways that go beyond what we can see and hear with our senses."

You know, I have listened to Al Gore, I have listened to Bill Clinton, I have listened to George H. W. Bush, and I have listened to George W Bush...Only one of those men has ever had me wanting to throw things through the TV because he didn't make any sense, and it wasn't Al Gore. Why do some people have so much trouble with feeling put upon by a person with a brain who actually uses it? Story after story after story comes out of the Media that plays upon the "superiority" they feel oozes from Al Gore. What is that all about?

Well hell, go read it for yourself if ya want...Washington Post - Dana Milbank

The clock on the wall says it's time to run...catch ya later...